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13 posts categorized "Windows 7"

September 16, 2011

Now that the Windows 8 Developer Preview is out, I got it installed on a VirtualBox instance. As I was reading thru some of the dialogs that popup during installation, I got a sense that since this is an early release, the developers got more freedom and have displayed a sense of humor in some of the messages.

Here are some of the ones that I found interesting:

I liked this the best (something you don’t say often for a license dialog )

This one, though not humorous, seems to be less formal that what you usually see

November 15, 2009

I like the new dock UI though it takes some time to get used to it, but I really miss the quick launch toolbar. I especially miss the single click launch functionality that quick launch provides.

It is very easy to enable this in Win 7 and there are a number of posts online, but there are some gotchas that I found while enabling it on my machine (since most of these posts are based on the beta).

The first step is to create a new toolbar. So right-click the somewhere on the taskbar and choose the Toolbars and add a New toolbar. This will open a dialog to choose a directory that will be displayed as the toolbar.

Goto %appdata%\Microsoft\Internet Explorer\.

This directory should map out to something like C:\Users\<username>\AppData\Roaming\Microsoft\Internet Explorer.

Now create a directory called Quick Launch under this folder and use that as the directory for the new toolbar and click OK.

You will find the new toolbar has been created but at the right corner of the taskbar right next to the system tray. It is quite easy and tricky to move this. Click the dotted vertical bars and pull it to the left edge right next to the start button. (You may have to unlock the toolbar to move it).

Once you have positioned the toolbar to the right position, you now need to change its look. By default the toolbar shows only the text, we need it to show the icons to resemble the original quick launch.

Right-click the new toolbar and de-select the Show Text and Show Title options.

October 27, 2009

Basically what this allows you to do is to have different default printer settings based on the network you are connected to. This is a real boon for people like me who carry laptops between home and office. So now that I upgraded to Win 7 I can setup my computer to switch the default printer based on whether I am in Office or Home and it really makes life easy (take it from me).

The way to set this up is to go to the Printers and Devices screen and select one of the available printers. You will find a “Manage Default Printer” Option appear at the top bar. Clicking that brings up a second screen that allows you to do this magic.

In this screen, first choose the option to have different default printers (This is the option chosen by default). Then start doing your mapping between the network and the printer. You need to have connected to the network at least once for it to appear here and the printer needs to be installed. Once you map, click Add and the magic happens.

So now when you change networks you will see that the default printer switches. The small green tick mark () that appears next to the default printer in the previous window actually moves too. If you want to have fun, try changing between the single default printer and location aware setting and see the default printer change on the fly.. :)

Do note that this is mapping a network to a default printer. So if like me you travel to different Offices which share the same basic network, then you still may end up having the wrong default printer. I am still trying to find if I can some how get this to work based on a subnet, but have not found a way to do it yet.

Also to note this is supposedly available only on the premium versions (Professional and Ultimate) of Win 7 and only on Laptop or other mobile devices.

October 26, 2009

I have mostly installed Win 7 on a clean machine till now (many number of times counting the Beta and the RCs). I have usually found the clean install very fast and straight forward. I am yet to come across a scenario where I had to download and install drivers with Win 7. Almost always it was able to find the drivers from the MS and get the system up and running in no time.

This weekend I decided to get my laptop onto Win 7. I have been putting this task away for quite sometime as my laptop has a multitude of software installed and I hated having to spend the time to reinstall everything.

So this weekend I decided to go the upgrade route. So I upgraded my Vista install to Win 7. Initially the setup came up with a list of software already installed that would not work with Win 7. Surprisingly this included SQL Server 2008. I did some “binging” and found a number of references of SQL 2008 needed SP1 to work with Win 7(SQL Server on Windows 7). So I un-installed all the mentioned software and then went ahead with the upgrade.

Well it went on for a couple of hours and I just let it run overnight. Next morning I had a running Win 7 with most of my programs working fine (At least the ones I have used till now). There were a couple of clinks. My gadgets settings did not migrate correctly. I actually had to remove and re-add the weather gadget to get it working and my clocks had been reset. But these were very minor problems, easily rectifiable.

So if you are upgrading to Win 7 then be ready for the upgrade to take a lot longer than a clean install.

October 20, 2009

Ok, you have read a lot about the Win XP mode in Windows 7 and think that you will able to play that old game that you have that will not run on Vista (Yes, I do have a number of those old games sitting around. Railroad Tycoon anyone??)? Well you are wrong!!

First of all, the Win XP mode is aimed at businesses that run LOB (ie. Line of Business) applications that do not run on Vista. So this feature is available only in the Win 7 Professional and up version. (I think you don't even get it in Home Premium, you will have to go for Ultimate)

Why would the games not run on Win XP Mode? Well the answer is in the graphics card. Most games that came out during the XP days (which are the culprits) use DirectX and need a graphics card that supports DirectX. Microsoft Virtual PC and Win XP mode(which is based on the VPC core) do not emulate a graphics card that supports DirectX. From what I can gather they emulate a low end graphics card with 8 MB of video RAM (an S3 Trio 64 Video card with 8mb of video ram).

So if you want to really play those older games/apps that require DirectX support you have a couple of options:

1. If the app runs with compatibility set, you have a easy way out. This option rarely works with games though.

2. You can dual boot between Vista/Win7 and XP. I hate this option as I need to switch reboot my machine just to play a game for a couple of minutes.

3. Use a virtualization program that can emulate DirectX.

Currently VMware officially supports this option in their Workstation product. I tested it out with the trial version and the supports seems quite good. Some of my games did work on, and a few crashed the VM. ( I do expect that as games are well know to use OS hacks and unsupported APIs for speed etc.). My only problem is that the product is quite costly at $189. Do I want to spend $189 to play a couple of games, even if I love them?? This is a product aimed at the business user and not the hobbyist and that is why it is so costly. It would be great if VMWare can come out with a hobbyist product.

The other option I found was a open source/freeware product called VirtualBox from Sun. They currently have beta support for DirectX. The professional version is available for free for personal use and they also have a Open Source version which does not have some features like USB support etc. (You can find the differences here) Since the professional version is free for personal use, I went for that. Though the UI and the website is more open sourceish, the actual implementation of DirectX support seems very Robust. Actually, I think vBox runs the games better in my view.

VirtualBox has been running on my Win 7 Desktop for a couple of weeks with no problem.

May 04, 2009

Now with Windows 7 RC out, one of the most talked about features is the Virtual XP Mode. This basically gives you a Windows XP running in a virtual machine.

This is a separate download apart from Win 7 available in MSDN or Technet (For subscribers only now). You need to download two pieces of software.

First download the Windows Virtual PC Beta (a very small 5 MB download), which is a version of Virtual PC designed to run in Win 7 Professional and above only. It also has modifications to allow it to integrate with explorer and also allow the virtual machine to access USB devices (One of the big shortcoming in Virtual PC for me is its inability to access USB devices).

Once you have this you need to download the Virtual XP Mode, which is basically the XP vhd. It is a 500MB or so download. Once you install this, you get a start menu link that allows you to launch the virtual machine.

When this start, if allows you set a password for the default user, named “User”. The virtual machine is configured to run with 256 MB RAM out of the box.

I am interested to see how this works in real life. I have just got it installed, but not sure if it would be too much of a pain to use. Will post my experience after a couple of days.

One of the surprising things for me, is that even though this has got a lot of press coverage, the Virtual XP mode download is not in the Top Downloads list of MSDN as of now. So not everyone downloading Win 7 or Win 2010 server (Both of which practically fill up the top downloads), seems to be that interested in this.

April 30, 2009

As expected the Win 7 RC is now available in both MSDN and Connect site. The only problem seems to be that both of these sites are currently down, I suspect due to the huge number of downloads that is happening.. :)